Memorial Day MLB standings check: Surprises, disappointments - ESPN
ESPN It's Memorial Day, MLB fans! And that means you are free to officially look at the MLB standings.
The saying goes, among baseball fans, that you should avoid checking the standings until Memorial Day, which puts us two months into the season. That gives teams time to play enough games to add meaning to what we're seeing happen in every division.
In theory, the small-sample-size blips should start regressing to the mean, and what you see at this point should start to reflect what you might see come October.
And while your team's position in the standings today might not guarantee it will end the season there, there is some truth to the concept: According to Elias Sports Bureau data, 58% of teams (90 of 155) that were in sole possession of first place on the morning of June 1 have gone on to win their division in the wild-card era (since 1995 and excluding 2020).
We asked ESPN MLB experts Bradford Doolittle, Joon Lee, Buster Olney and David Schoenfield to take a good look at the standings and weigh in on what stands out most to them so far.
